ThedaCare has long been regarded as one of the most influential examples of Lean thinking in healthcare. These posts explore what ThedaCare’s journey actually teaches leaders—about management systems, executive commitment, strategy deployment, culture change, and the fragility of improvement when leadership changes.
Rather than treating Lean as a set of tools or success stories frozen in time, this archive examines real lessons, missteps, evolution, and leadership reflections from ThedaCare and others who have studied or worked with the organization.
Back in 2009, I pointed an early iPhone at my TV and recorded a Fox News segment about ThedaCare’s collaborative care model. The footage is grainy. You can see the glare on the screen and hear the room around me.…
tl;dr summary: A journal article evidences Lean’s effectiveness in healthcare, challenging skeptics. It finds that Lean adoption in U.S. public hospitals is linked to lower costs, along with better patient care and experiences. Success relies on leadership commitment, daily Lean…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! News, blogs, articles, resources, and links about creating value, continuous improvement, innovation, and leadership. Healthcare – Creating Value for…
Today's post is the transcript of a discussion that I recently recorded with Jeff Hunter, the author of the book Patient-Centered Strategy: A Learning System for Better Care.
Jeff is presenting a free webinar that KaiNexus and I are hosting on September 24:
Putting Strategy Back in Strategy Deployment
Below, you can listen to our chat where Jeff introduces himself and some of the concepts that he'll be presenting about. The transcript follows the audio player.
Hi — I’m still not blogging much these days, as I try to focus on finishing my book Measures of Success. You can still buy the current “in-progress” book, which is about 85% complete. I’m still editing and tweaking the book,…
I’ve heard a lot of rumblings recently about what might be happening at ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that’s been considered one of the best examples of "Lean healthcare" anywhere in the world for more than a decade. It seems that there is an evolution occurring in their approach to Lean.
I’ve received a formal statement from ThedaCare public relations, which you can find in this post, so I will stick to the facts that they have given me and other information that's publicly available online.
Here's an interesting Bloomberg article about Toyota never being satisfied, which includes improving the way they improve:
"Toyota's Way Changed the World's Factories. Now the Retool"
Did you know that Toyota has a central TPS group??
Lean can be very fragile. History shows that Lean can fall apart even in an organization that is years into a "Lean journey" with strong CEO involvement.
How is this possible? If often happens when a new CEO is brought in from the outside. In the case of the manufacturing company, Wiremold, it happened when they were acquired by a French company, Legrand.
As an aside, the team that coined the term "Lean" almost used the term "fragile," as I blogged about here.
Back in 2007, Bob Emiliani joined me for Episode #30 of the podcast. As we revisit the podcast and the new transcript I had made, what are the lessons for manufacturers or hospitals?
What's the risk that's created when new leadership takes over?
Joining me again for Episode #288 is Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that has long been considered a worldwide leader in the practice of Lean in healthcare.
Recently, in Episode #286, Dean shared his reflections on his work and ThedaCare's "Lean journey." Today, the topic is Accountable Care Organizations and other bigger-picture healthcare reform topics.
Dean was also previously my guest in Episodes 119 and 144.
I'm including a full transcript along with a three-page PDF summary, as I've been doing recently.
"Through a collaboration with Toyota, Children's HealthSM, the leading pediatric health system in North Texas, announced today it has successfully reduced rates of central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSIs) by 75 percent with patients in the gastroenterology unit."
My guest for Episode #286 is Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that has long been considered a worldwide leader in the practice of Lean in healthcare. See this article about his retirement, where he says "I've gotten more than I've given."
Dean was previously my guest in Episodes 119 and 144 and I'm thrilled that he took time out of his retirement to talk with me about his lessons learned as he looks back on how ThedaCare's Lean journey has evolved, including some things he would consider to be missteps and challenges that they used as a springboard to get even better.
I will also be releasing a separate episode where Dean talks about their experiences with Accountable Care Organizations (our topic from #144) and other "big picture" healthcare issues of the day.
I'm including a full transcript along with a three-page PDF summary, as I've been doing recently.
Today, we’re looking back at a podcast that I did back in 2015 with Alan G. Robinson, PhD, co-author of many books including The Idea-Driven Organization. I’m talking about Kaizen today at the Studer Group annual “What’s Right in Healthcare” conference, so…
